NYC – Day Two

Had breakfast in the Blue Fin restaurant in the W where eggs and bacon alone would set you back $17 but served with a great deal more aplomb than the self service All You Can Eat Hard Rock Cafe. Then we went to the Pulse Exhibition just off Times Square http://www.discoverytsx.com/exhibitions/bodyworlds This is an exhibition of human bodies that have been donated for science to cultivate the Plastination technique. Macabre I thought and I really did not want to go and especially not straight after I had had breakfast, but I do not regret having gone. We all think we know what happens inside our bodies and yes we do, to a certain extent, but when it is all graphically displayed in front of you we, Homo Sapiens, are nothing short of a miracle. For example, pumping around inside each one of us are 60,000 miles of veins, arteries and capillaries. There is no age restriction here, but did see a a boy of about 7, ‘in a bit of a state’being removed from the exhibition by his mother. So I would have thought this is an exhibition for teenagers up. It is graphic, without being gory.

How to follow that? A trip up the Empire State Building and it so so worth it when you get up to the 86 floor, you can see for miles in all directions. www.esbnyc.com You are provided you with an interactive hand held device which tells you everything you need to know about this iconic building.

The Empire State Building taken from the Roof Terrace Bar at The Strand Hotel. www.thestrandnyc.com. N.B Over 21’s only, but they will let minors in for a photo opportunity.

From there we took a cab Chelsea Market http://www.chelseamarket.com/ for a spot of lunch. This is a foodie’s heaven. What an explosion of tastes on offer there! We opted for a Thai lunch, followed by freshly made pancakes and doughnuts! Having just been to see the Pulse Exhibition in the morning and having seen exactly how small our stomachs actually are, I now better understand the saying fit to bust!

So what better way to burn off the calorie overload than another five mile hike! You can get on the High Line http://www.thehighline.org/ a couple of blocks from Chelsea Market. The High Line was a freight rail line, which was operational from 1934 to 1980, which carried meat to the meatpacking district, agricultural goods to the factories and warehouses of the industrial West Side, and mail to the Post Office. It is a really brilliant redevelopment of this old railway line with sights across the Hudson to New Jersey.

Now a public park built on a 1.45-mile-long elevated rail structure running from Gansevoort Street to West 34th Street on Manhattan’s West Side. If you haven’t gorged yourself at Chelsea Market, there are food vendors along the way.

We walked to Gansevoot Street and kept on going to Greenwich Village, where we had a few beers, which helped the aching feet but we took a cab back to Times Square and fuelled by the beer booked tickets for the off Broadway show the Fantastiks. Remember the song … Try to remember the kind of September, when life was slow and oh, so mellow. Try to remember the kind of September when grass was green and grain was yellow …..? Book and lyrics by Tom Jones, music by Harvey Schmidt. A modern day Romeo and Juliet and great fun.

If you book late in the day you can get at least a 30% reduction on tickets, A perfect end to a perfect day, even though I thought at the time that $17 for two glasses of wine at the gorgeous Snapple Theatre was a lot, little did I know.

Brian Trubshaw – Test Pilot

BRIAN TRUBSHAW was chief test pilot of the British prototype Concorde 002 during its development phase. He was regarded as one of Britain’s most famous names in aviation. As test pilot for Vickers-Armstrongs he test flew the Viscount, the Valiant, the VC10 and Super VC10. He test flew the 1-11 for the British Aircraft Corporation before reaching the pinnacle of his career as Chief Test Pilot for of Concorde. In 1980 he became Director and General Manager of Filton until he retired in 1986, but remained on the board of the Civil Aviation Authority, until his death in 2001.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

ARCHIVES

ARCHIVES

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